Friday, July 18, 2008

Iced tea at the Beijing Olympics?

It's hot in Beijing these days and likely to stay that way through next month's olympics. Olympic officials plan to serve a tea drink to volunteers to keep them cool, the English language site Window of China reports: Millions of volunteers will battle high temperatures during the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics. Fortunately for them, the volunteers will be able to use traditional Chinese tea to cool themselves, thanks to the Chinese Traditional Medicine Association.
The website shows a pitcher of tea described as containing honeysuckle, ebony, green tea. The "ebony" could be a translation issue from black tea, which is sometimes called red tea, although aged teas such as pu-er and liubao seem to be called black tea. The ebony tree is not native to China and is probably not part of the traditional medicine. Good for piano keys though.
I wonder whether they'll serve them over ice, or just chilled? Iced tea is a Western concept. I've never seen it served in China. Bottles of sweetened green tea are the rage, however. I'll try to track down a taste of the Olympic honeysuckle tea on my trip there in September.

1 comment:

Geoffrey Kutnick said...

Hello,

I was wondering if you accept press releases regarding new tea products. We have information regarding a portable loose tea steeper that we would love to send you. I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,
Geoffrey Kutnick
geoff@kreislermediagroup.com